Take a look at this. Focus on the “+” in the middle, and describe what you see.

Troxler Effect image

No, the purple dots don’t disappear, though that’s probably what you “see.” Worse, there’s no green dot. Your brain sees green when the purple disappears — and even when your brain refuses to let you know the purple dots are still there, it will tell you you see a green dot when the purple dots you can’t see, disappear.

So, is it so hard to understand that people might see weird things in the mirror, if they stare at their own faces for a while?

Great mysteries of science, history and spirit call to us: How do the monarch butterflies do it?

Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) fly north from their enclave in Mexico every spring, stopping to lay eggs on milkweed plants. After a migration of several hundred miles, that first group that left Mexico dies off. Their offspring hatch in a few days, devour the milkweed, make a chrysalis, metamorphose into butterflies, then fly farther north, where they repeat their parents’ behavior: Lay some eggs, and die. Within three generations, they’ve spread north into Canada.

Inviting the monarchs in: You can see how Kathryn worked to attract butterflies. In this photo, you can see the butterfly weed (a milkweed), red Turk's cap, and blue ageratum especially for the monarchs.

Then the fourth generation does something so strange and wonderful people can’t stop talking about it: They fly back to Mexico, to the same trees their great-great-great grandparents left. There they sip some nectar, get some water, and spend a lot of time hanging in great globs, huddling over the winter, to start life for generations of monarch butterflies the next spring.

Sometimes in Texas in October, we can see clouds of monarch butterflies winging south. If we’re lucky, they stop to visit our backyards and gardens, and we might provide some water and nectar to urge them homeward. Kathryn, of course, plants the stuff the monarchs like, to help them, and to give us a chance to see them.

Monarch habitat in Mexico is under severe stress and threat. Late storms and early freezes decimated monarch populations over the last decade [yes, that’s the proper use of “decimated;” look it up]. Human plantings are more critical to the monarch butterflies than ever before.

Butterfly weed — there are several plants that take this name in various parts of the country, this one is Asclepias tuberosa, but Kathryn’s bloom redder and more intense yellow than any of the photos I’ve seen on line.

Dead Link?

We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!